


The Stagecoach

by fraternite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Sad Bini
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 11:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2227875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/fraternite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even the best things must come to an end.  But it's okay, because they're together, and they're still laughing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stagecoach

**Author's Note:**

> I owe a tremendous debt to pilferingapples's thoughts about the significance of the bini.

It happens early in the morning, when the sun's first light catches the smoke from the guns and transforms the barricade into an otherwordly cloudscape. Inside the clouds, the world narrows down to a few square feet of space, a single faceless assailant, all bayonet and musket barrel, and a single scrap of wrecked furniture to defend; stumble into an open patch and all is radiance and clear summer sky, the whole of the heavens spread out above.

It's in this dreamy fairy-land of smoke and brilliant sunlight that Bossuet's luck lets him down one last time.

Even the most buoyant disposition cannot negate the fact of pain, and Bossuet is crying out by the time they get him onto the table. His eyes are closed, his lips pressed together, bloodless. His clenched fists tremble at his sides. Joly launches into action, pushing aside the students standing over Bossuet and tearing open his blood-soaked shirt.

At the sight of the bullet wound, the color drains from his face and he shuts his eyes.

The paralysis lasts just an instant. Then Joly's usual energy takes over again; he calls for someone to bring some water, pressing rags against the wound with one hand while the other flutters over the rest of Bossuet's body, checking for other injuries.

Bossuet groans and opens his eyes. As his wavery vision falls on Joly, a smile breaks over his face.

"Jollllly," he says. "What is the verdict--should I invest in a cane? Or will I leave this bed easily on my own?"

Joly's eye brim over with tears, though he returns Bossuet's smile with equal brilliance. "I am doing the best I can to ensure you a long future as an invalid," he says, his voice reedy and choked with emotion. "But I'm afraid there's little I can do to keep you from leaving without anyone's help. And--and soon."

"Ah--well. It's the one certainty in life." Bossuet winces as Joly does something with the compress on his chest. "Although I--ngh--I'm quite surprised at the manner. I thought it would be a suitably bizarre accident . . . I don't know, an explosion in a jam factory. Instead . . . shot in the chest on a barricade. What an eminently _average_ death for a revolutionary!"

Joly pauses in his work to clasp Bossuet's hand. "You are anything but average, my friend. And the magnificence of your life would outweigh even the most uninteresting end."

"All thanks to you," Bossuet whispers, his breath catching in his throat.

A sob shatters Joly's grin for a moment, but he presses on bravely. "All the brightest moments in my life are thanks to _you._ Do you recall the time we sailed from the Pont d'Arcole to the Pont d'Iéna in an old oyster cart?"

Bossuet laughs weakly. "The water coming in faster than we could bail it out." Tears slip from his eyes to draw lighter trails through the blood and gunpowder soot on his face. "Or the night with Jehan when we accidentally set that tree on fire?"

"Breakfasts with Grantaire in the middle of the night."

"The adventures of Donne-qui-faudrait and his man Sancho Pensant."

"What about when you pretended to be a cleric and you--you blessed that old woman's dog so seriously?"

"The day with the eggs, oh don't forget the eggs."

"You're right," Joly says, laughing and weeping at once. "That was our greatest triumph."

"We've been happy." Bossuet sighs and closes his eyes.

"So very happy."

"That's more than many can say." Bossuet's eyes find Joly again, and he smiles. "If this--" he indicates the hole in his chest, the bloody room, the tumult outside the cafe in a single wobbly gesture, "--if this means others will have a chance . . . at what we had . . ." He coughs, and Joly wipes the blood from his lips with a clean corner of his own shirt. ". . . then I am content."

"It's enough," Joly agrees, streaking his cheeks with blood as he tries to wipe away the tears. He tries to say something else, but can't.

Bossuet tries to lift a hand to Joly's face, fails, and attempts to calm him with a smile instead. "I never . . . truly considered myself unlucky, you know."

Joly takes the hand he dropped. "And now?"

"In such company? Never."

Outside, the noise of the battle swells louder. The defenders shout over the roar of musket fire, calling for more bullets, for their comrades to take heart, for a doctor. A wounded student staggers through the door, collapsing onto the body of another man. Combeferre, soaked in blood up to his elbows, looks up from where he is stitching another student back together, his face desperate, but says nothing.

"I have to go," Joly says, glancing over his shoulder but still clinging to Bossuet's hand. "I'm needed--I want to stay, but there's nothing else I can do--and that fellow--"

"Go," Bossuet urges him. He squeezes his hand. "I'll be all right."

Joly flutters, hesitating. "Wait for me--won't you? You won't board that stagecoach before . . . before I get back?"

"Don't worry," Bossuet whispers. He pauses to cough, flecking his lips with a deep red. "When has a coach I awaited . . . ever been on time?"

Joly makes it to the wounded student's side just in time to feel his heartbeat stop. Then there is a cry from just outside the door, and he hurries out into the brilliantly-lit smoke and finds the fallen workman, saving his life--for the moment--with a tourniquet around his thigh. The air is heavy with smoke and the smell of blood, and bullets sing overhead, and it's eight o'clock in the morning and on an ordinary day they'd just be going out now to get something for breakfast. Apropos of nothing, a brilliant pun about apricots occurs to Joly, and he keeps it on the tip of his tongue to pass on to Bossuet, to earn one more laugh. It wouldn't be too bad, he thinks, to go out of the world laughing with a friend.

But when he gets back inside the cafe, Bossuet is gone.

 


End file.
